Borne in the Blood Page 20

  Her eyes began to open automatically. Tiny slits of vision swam through the fog to her and she steadied herself, trying not to feel nausea rising up like a flood. She breathed deeply, willing her heartbeat to stay as slow as possible.

  The voices in the other room didn't change, so she was relatively certain that nobody was yet aware that she was conscious. Instinctively, she knew that was a good thing.

  Slowly, millimeter by millimeter, she opened her eyes. It took a long time for what she was seeing to make sense to her even though it was relatively mundane. But she had been so deep inside herself that the walls and closet door took long moments to mean anything to her. It was as though she was swimming up after being incredibly submerged inside herself.

  “You’re not supposed to be awake,” came a whisper.

  Dimly, Tesa knew she should be afraid, but she could not make herself do it. Instead she stayed as still as she possibly could, waiting for all her cells to reconnect to each other.

  Gradually, little by little, she opened her eyes fully, staring at the dark figure on the other end of the bed. It didn't make sense at all, and then it did.

  Jolie .

  Jolie held a single finger to her lips. Shhhhhh. Then she got up from the bed and paced over to the far corner, returning with a tall glass of water. Tesa could see the water swirling in minute detail, glowing a faint, electric blue.

  She raised her trembling hand and took it, focusing on the sensation of the temperature change as it seeped through her skin. That meant she still had Gunner’s blood coursing through her, and for some reason that gave her an absurd amount of hope.

  “Drink it if you can, but slowly,” Jolie said, just barely in a whisper. She also knew that raised voices would raise suspicion.

  Tesa didn't even nod her understanding. She couldn't afford to spend that energy. After Tesa stared at the glass for a long time, Jolie covered her hands with her own and lifted the vessel to Tesa's open lips. As the liquid tumbled over her tongue, Tesa remembered how to swallow and gulped slowly, grateful for the sensation of slaking an enormous thirst.

  “I can't even believe you're awake,” Jolie whispered. “When they got me, I don’t think I woke up for four days.”

  Tesa assumed that was another happy byproduct of the blood.

  “I… we’ve been looking for you,” Tesa whispered, then she wanted to laugh at how ridiculous it sounded. She could barely move her lips, much less rescue anybody. But still, there she was.

  Jolie smoothed Tesa's hair away from her forehead and clucked her tongue sympathetically. “Let's don't talk about that now. Just breathe deep, drink the water. You’re gonna be okay.”

  Strangely, she did feel slightly more okay. As the fog receded, she started to feel like herself again as though the sun was passing through the clouds and everything was getting brighter.

  She lifted her head and looked around the room, gathering details. There was a door with a wedge of light under it that presumably let out. Another door with no light, and yet another door with no light that seemed to have a sound to it as though there was a great space behind it. A closet and a bathroom then, she figured.

  She sat up on the large, tall bed, not unlike the one at the mansion. But it was softer, as though the mattresses were made of feathers. The plush cushions seemed to rise up around her thighs, almost sucking her back in. She didn't really like it.

  Tentatively, she swung one leg over the side and then the other. She heard Jolie gasp in surprise but paid her no mind as she, trembling, slid to the floor. Though her feet were still half-numb, she forced herself to take a few steps in the direction of the enormous windows.

  They were very high up. The Chicago skyline glittered raucously below her, almost blinding her in its intensity. She could watch the traffic wind through the streets and see the tiny, colorful outfits of everyone below her. If she listened very hard, she could almost make out conversations. But mostly they just flowed together as one giant symphony, the pulsing throb of the city's life force.

  “I have to get you out of here,” Tesa muttered.

  Jolie walked up beside her and looked out the window. She crossed her arms in front of her chest.

  “I don't suppose you can fly, can you?”

  Tesa scowled. “I'm not sure,” she answered honestly.

  Jolie sucked her teeth in disgust. “You're not funny, Tesa,” she said and trudged back to the bed, lying back on it.

  Tesa turned back. From the light of the window, now she could make out the rest of the room. It wasn't nearly as fine as what she had become accustomed to, but it was definitely still fairly luxe. There were paintings on the walls: modern, garish things. Black and white expressionist things that some artist had stabbed together. Bentwood chairs. Chrome that glittered dully.

  “I'm not kidding, Jolie. Your mother is looking for you. We’ve got to get out of here. I’m sure Gunner will find us. We can get you back home!”

  Jolie flopped onto her back and stared at the ceiling. One leg dangled off the bed.

  “You can try, Tesa, but there's no point. They got you on purpose. They got me on purpose. And…”

  “And nothing!” Tesa interrupted. “You made a mistake, OK? Anybody could do it. But you have a good life… a great life if you play your cards right. We just gotta get you back home.”

  “No, Tesa. I can’t go back. I screwed up so bad!”

  “It doesn't matter now. Gunner promised your mother —”

  “— my mother knows?” Jolie sat up suddenly. Tesa could see her features with absolute clarity as she went through a cycle of emotions. First fear, then shame, then a deep, deep sorrow. “Oh God, poor Mama.”

  “None of that, Jolie,” Tesa said, as loudly as she dared. “We will figure something out. Just let me think, let me listen. I'll come up with something.”

  Tesa nodded to herself. She had been stuck in tighter spots before, right? As tough as Yvonne seemed, she wasn't nearly as tough as Stark, and Tesa had very nearly escaped him once.

  Of course, she hadn't actually escaped him, but she didn't want to think about that.

  In any case, she could still hear the voices in the other room and they sounded very distracted. Concerned. Argumentative.

  She walked over to the bathroom and opened the door, peering inside without turning on the light. It was just a standard luxury bathroom, though there was a small door to the right of the shower enclosure. She padded over to it and opened it. Inside were stacks of Egyptian cotton towels, but behind them she could sense a draft.

  Perhaps a small entryway? Perhaps for the furnace or something?

  She walked back into the bedroom with her hands up. “Okay, Jolie, I think there might be a way out of here. Just come this way and let's take a look at —”

  “— I can’t go anywhere, Tesa.”

  Tesa shook her head. “Of course you can. You have to. It's a tight fit but…”

  “No, you don't understand,” Jolie said sadly.

  Tesa froze. Awareness began to trickle through her. Something was wrong. Something smelled wrong. Something smelled dark… A blackish purple…

  Jolie raised her wrist. With trembling fingers she pulled back on the fabric bracelet that covered her Clean Blood Badge. Tesa bit her lip. The badge glowed a toxic crimson.

  “You're… you're sick?”

  Jolie nodded, saying nothing.

  “But what happened? Just days ago you were fine. I saw it! Not two weeks ago… You were fine!”

  “Keep your voice down!”

  Tesa nodded silently, listening intently to the other room. The voices continued, but she heard her own heartbeat start to rise and her emotions became more tense. If Stark was right, she was about to start having some very loud thoughts.

  “Just tell me what happened Jolie. Just tell me.”

  Jolie walked back up to the window, placing her hand upon it. Tesa could see the glow from her wrist reflected in the glass.

  “I'm not sure. I guess I wasn
't careful. I guess I got carried away. I was fine, you know? Just partying. But I must have gotten infected at some point. And then somebody saw it. And then… You should've seen the way they looked at me, Tesa.”

  “What you mean?”

  “I thought they were going to kill me. I really did. And then Yvonne found me… I don't even know how. She said she'd been looking for me too, that she still had a place for me. And really… I guess I'm lucky.”

  “I don't think you can believe anything Yvonne says,” Tesa said pointedly. “Whatever she told you, we gotta go. We need to check it out with Gunner. He’ll know. He'll tell you the truth, Jolie.”

  “But don’t you understand? I can't go! I can't go anywhere else now. I'm as good as dead, Tesa!”

  “Don't say that, Jolie! You can't say that!”

  “It's true, Tesa! I'm lucky that Gio will even have me. If he wasn't so far gone himself, they would turn me in, and you know it.”

  Tesa shook her head. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. Turn her in? She wasn't even sure what that entailed. She'd heard that people with certain viruses just seemed to disappear as soon as they were identified, but what the hell did that have to do with Gio?

  “Just go, Tesa. If you can think of a way out of here… Just go. I can probably distract them or something. Go! ”

  Tesa took a step toward her. She searched her mind for an answer. There had to be something. There just had to be.

  Instinctively, she brought her wrist her mouth. Before she knew what she had done, she had snapped her fangs into place and plunged them into her own wrist, just as she had seen Gunner do.

  When she drew her arm back, two twin streams of glittering red blood flowed freely from her pulsing vein, Jolie gasped in horror.

  “ What are you doing?! ”

  Tesa took a step forward, keeping her voice as even as she could. She knew she looked horrific with her fangs out and blood everywhere.

  “Jolie, you're going to have to trust me. Just trust me. Just do it.”

  “Oh my God, you’re one of them!”

  “I’m not,” Tesa whispered. “It’s too hard to explain, but I swear I’m not.”

  Jolie's eyes were wide and terrified. Tesa could see her pulse throbbing in both temples and the side of her neck. She could smell Jolie's terror, smell the sweat that burst across her skin. She could smell the sickness there too. It was terrible; it was thriving inside her. She knew that if Jolie did not accept her blood, she would be worse than dead, and very soon.

  “It'll be all right,” Tesa murmured.

  She took another step and reached out for Jolie's shoulder. Jolie was quaking so hard that she almost slipped from her grasp. Taking a deep breath, Tesa pictured the fog. She pictured the blue light seeping from her fingertips into Jolie’s skin.

  Instantly, Jolie's heartbeat slowed. Her lips parted and she sighed.

  “What… is that?”

  Oh my God, what did I just do? Tesa wondered.

  She didn't have time to think about it. She lifted her wrist to Jolie's lips and let the blood spatter across her open mouth, her waiting tongue. After a few seconds, Jolie took a swallow, then another. Her eyes closed and she took Tesa's skin in her mouth, quaking as she drank.

  After a few moments, Tesa pulled away. She wasn't sure how much Jolie needed, and she wasn’t sure how much she had to spare. But she could feel it — it was working. She could almost smell it receding. The bruise, it was dissolving.

  She reached down, plucking Jolie's limp wrist in her fingers. She stared at the faint red glow of the badge. It dimmed, changing from rose to mauve, then to violet, then finally… to blue.

  She heard Jolie suck her breath between her teeth.

  “That’s not possible! What have you done?”

  Tesa shook her head. “I'm really not sure. But let's hope it sticks.”

  Outside the door, Tesa sensed a change in the cadence of the speech. “We have to get you cleaned up, and quickly. Come on.”

  She grabbed Jolie by the elbow and dragged her to the bathroom, flipping on the light that blinded her with its intensity and fluorescent buzz. She snapped on both taps full blast and plunged her wrist underneath the water, rubbing the wound with her thumb the way that she had seen Gunner do.

  Sliding a towel off the rack, Jolie dampened the plush fabric and dragged it across her lips to clean herself. Awestruck, she stared at herself in the mirror as her color changed from something like ashes back to the deep mahogany she used to have.

  “Tesa, it's a miracle. Oh my God, girl!”

  “Keep your voice down! And put your bracelet back on!”

  Nodding, Jolie fit her gaudy fabric bracelet back over her Clean Blood Badge, concealing it. She tugged her sleeves back down and twisted her hair into a high bun.

  “Seriously, Tesa, what did you do? Do you know what this means? If anybody finds out you can—”

  “— nobody is going to find out!” Tesa insisted. She slammed her palms on the countertop. “Don't say anything until I figure out what the hell is going on. Okay?”

  “Well, okay, but…”

  “Don't say anything!!”

  Finally, Jolie nodded. From the way she was looking at herself, Tesa could tell that she had never expected to see herself healthy again.

  Back in the bedroom, Tesa heard the door open. She pushed past Jolie out of the bathroom and strode into the middle of the room, blocking Jolie from Yvonne's view and crossing her arms over her chest.

  “Yvonne,” she declared defiantly. “I guess it's time you and I had a talk.”

  CHAPTER 21

  “This is what you do, I presume? Eat? Like a character in a fairytale?”

  Yvonne sauntered across the dining room, gesturing at the heavily laden table with her long, crimson fingernails. A dark-eyed man pulled out a tufted arm chair for her and she dropped into it, crossing one leg over the other at the knee.

  “Well, sit , then. Enjoy it. It’s not like I had this prepared for myself.”

  Tesa could hear her stomach growling insistently. Humiliated, she jammed her fist against her abdomen and walked with as much dignity as she could muster to the table.

  Trying not to look at it did her no good. She could smell everything. The paella, the ceviche. The petite, sesame-crusted dumplings swimming in curry sauce. The tomatoes so plump they were practically lewd. Her jaw ached as she salivated shamelessly.

  “Where's Gio?” she croaked.

  “You don’t want to eat? After I went through all this trouble?” Yvonne raised her eyebrows and plucked a palm-sized slab of ham from a tray. She inspected it, turning it in her fingers and then dropping it back to the plate with a look of disgust.

  “Is there something else you'd prefer? Perhaps your tastes have improved somewhat? After all, I do have access to some lovely young philosophy majors. Non-smokers, I swear.”

  “I don't want any of that,” Tesa huffed. Her body was getting very frustrated with her, and her brain was flooding her with images of sampling just a bite. Just one or two. What could it hurt?

  Stop it, she commanded herself. Every single fairytale where the characters eat something in the evil witch’s lair ends badly, remember?

  “Yvonne, why am I here?” Tesa said, trying to affect the same bored drawl that Yvonne was using on her. It wasn't entirely convincing, but it was a start.

  Yvonne slumped down in her chair, steepling her fingers over her hips and tapping them against each other thoughtfully.

  “I believe I already explained this to you. Of course, you're here for Gio,” she said simply.

  Tesa nodded, since that's what she assumed Yvonne expected her to do. She breathed deeply, as slowly as she could. Though she had little idea what was going on, she was hopeful that the extra brainpower from Gunner’s blood was going to kick in any second.

  Yep, any second now.

  “Well then, where is he?”

  Yvonne tipped her head to one side, squinting shrewdly. “So… a
ll the questions in the world available to you, and that's the one you pick? That's what you really want to know? Where Gio is?”

  “Well, you've imprisoned both me and my boss’s daughter, so…”

  “Your boss's daughter? ” Yvonne parroted sarcastically. “And you think that's your… Yes. Of course you do.”

  Yvonne rolled her eyes to the ceiling, sucking her teeth loudly. For a moment, her fangs dropped out, then retracted slowly. Despite herself, Tesa found that fascinating.

  “All right, Tesa. Chantesa . Let's play. You know that you and your boss’s daughter are here for Gio. Let’s dig a little deeper. Why do you think that you have fangs?”

  “Because I'm Gunner’s Gypsy.”

  “You know that's a racist term,” Yvonne said, stabbing the air with her fingernail.

  Tesa flinched. “What's a racist term?”

  Arching her eyebrows supremely, Yvonne ran her tongue over her top row of teeth before answering. “ Gypsy . First of all, you're not a Gypsy. Second of all, even actual Gypsies do not like to be called Gypsies.”

  “Then what do you call —”

  “The proper term is Roma in most of southern Europe,” Yvonne lectured, looking bored. “Although the Irish like to be called Travelers. Scottish too. Somewhere along the line, someone decided — some man , in all probability — that all wandering people would be referred to as Gypsies. Pure laziness of thought. It’s not as though Egypt were some kind of great fountain of nomadic tribes, just belching them out so they could scurry all over the planet."

  “Oh,” Tesa stammered, confused.

  Despite not wanting to talk to Yvonne much at all, she found herself very curious. She hadn't really questioned the term Gypsy . Those were always the mysterious people on television, right? She hadn't even made the Egypt/Gypsy connection before, but now that Yvonne said it, it totally made sense. The words sounded the same. Of course they were related.

  “So why do you think you have fangs?” Yvonne asked again.

  Tesa shrugged. “Well, okay… If I'm not a Gypsy, then I don't know. Why don’t you tell me?”

  “Well, you are obviously something , don't you think?”